Taking Wushisan: Jikan' Tragedy And Intellectual's Fashioning In The Wei And Jin Dynasties

It is an unstable time of slaughter and division in the end of Han dynasty and Wei and Jin dynasties. This is an age full of brutal wars and frequent usurpations, and the politics is extraordinary dark and chaotic. The intellectual who is stagnated or attached to the ruling class, as the most sensitive group, is in danger and in deep water. The troubled times oppresses and vandalizes people's life, but it also gives them a chance to evoke the life sense and spirit, then it becomes the super flowery time in the history of culture idea of China. As we know, Jikang, who has matchless manners and elegant carriage, is respected and admired by the people of that time and the descendants, but murdered by Sima clique at last. This matter fells into disfavor at that time, and make the descendants respect and sympathize Jikang more. Now then, what is the deeply reason of the Jikang's death?As regards this issue, most of previous scholars thought Jikang ran counter to Sima clique's rebellion and he is so solitary, high-hearted and upright, and always scorn and abuse the saint, so they hold that Jikang's death must be correlative with the political reason and the characteristic of himself. That is really not in the wrong. But in this paper, it believing this kind of standpoint cannot illustrate the deep reason clearly. It comes up with a new view that Jikang's death is not only relevant to his characteristic and the political reason, but his habit of taking WuShiSan is also the important key which leads to his death. Taking WuShiSan is pretty popular in that time because of its efficacy in curing and keeping young, but it is harmful to human's body, character and spirit. Jikang's character therefore becomes more drastic after taking this medicine, and thus it resulted in his dying objectively. Besides, this trend is so popular on account of the rise of metaphysics thought, the eager for long-lived, the comment on character which was popular in intellectual's class and the dissolute life of the up class.